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Courthouse Prison Break, Part 2

Courtesy New York Police DepartmentFreddie Thompson, 35, posed as another person during an arraignment at the Staten Island Criminal Courthouse and was mistakenly released, the authorities said.

A suspect escaped from a Staten Island courthouse on Wednesday after he posed as another prisoner during an arraignment and was mistakenly released, according to the authorities.

The suspect, Freddie Thompson, 35, was set free around 3 p.m. from the Staten Island Criminal Courthouse. He had been charged with a pattern of robberies, but because of his assumed identity, he was released on a different, lesser charge.

The episode occurred a month after another suspect escaped from the Bronx Criminal Courthouse after he posed as a different person during an arraignment; he, too, was released on a lesser charge, according to the authorities.

Police Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly said on Thursday that a mistake was made by a police officer to allow the prisoner on Staten Island to escape.

Mr. Kelly, who spoke with reporters after he testified at a budget hearing at the City Council, showed a photo of Mr. Thompson, and he said that investigators were still trying to locate him.

Mr. Kelly said the police would be going to “more locations” to try to find him.

Mr. Kelly stopped short of saying there was a systemic problem.

“There was a mistake made, here, there is no question about it,” Mr. Kelly said. “The officer has been put on modified assignment, and we’ll be doing an investigation. But it’s also important to note that we make almost 400,000 arrests a year, and human beings are processing these arrests and processing the prisoners, and I think we’re going to see mistakes be made.”

Mr. Kelly rejected the notion that the escaped prisoner exploited a possible loophole.

“No,” he said. “There are ways to do it. There are pictures — you’re supposed to check the picture. There are ways of checking identification. Apparently this wasn’t appropriately done.”

I’ve been a criminal defense attorney for the past five years. This is a very easily exploited loophole at the arraignment process in all of the criminal courts of the City of New York. The most obvious answer is for the arresting officer to issue an ID bracelet similar to a hospital admission. A very minor bar code system could avoid any future “mistakes.”

So George and Michael (comments 4 and 5) think that the justice system isn’t inhumane enough already, and we should start bar-coding prisoners as if they were retail inventory.

The vast majority of our prisoners are nonviolent offenders who shouldn’t have been incarcerated in the first place, not to mention all the innocent people we lock up.

Given the NYPD’s track record (including sodomy, violating millions of people’s rights with their stop-and-frisk database, violently curtailing legitimate public assembly and protest, and cold-blooded murder) we ought to be looking at letting more people out, not complaining about this dude.

From what I understand, jailers (whether they be NYC Corrections or NYPD) are supposed to have documents with the alleged perpetrator’s name and picture on to avoid this sort of thing when a perpetrator is called before the judge. The jailer is to call the name of the alleged perp and then match his face to the “picture” on the sheet even before the perp is let out of the cell. Once the perp’s ID is confirmed, the perp is then “hand-cuffed”in the jail cell and personally escorted by one or more “jailers” to the courtroom.

This is SOP (“Standard Operating Procedure”) and the jailer, whom ever he or she is, should be taken to task for this obvious lack of judgment and deviation from protocol.

The only possible, rational explainantion is that perhaps the jailer was on the last leg of an over-time shift/tour and was just too tired and exhausted to give a damn.

I cannot blame the perp (to a point). He saw a ray of sunshine and exploited it. Good luck finding him anytime soon. Most likely he is out-of-state planning his next robbery or worse; which could have been avoided if the jailer just simply did his or her required job!!!

I must have missed something. Isn’t this 2010? Don’t we have laser scanners and bar code readers? How come these animals aren’t tagged and bar coded so they can be positively identified, tracked, and kept where they need to be kept?

Whether or not a vast majority of prisoners are arrested for non-violent crimes is immaterial to having an easy to administer and relatively fool-proof ID system.

I don’t think hospital patients consider these ID bracelets to be inhumane – and despite what you might like to believe – they have greater rights than prisoners – if only by the simple fact they are free to leave if they choose to do so.

The prisoner that was released should not have been. He’s been accused of serious crimes and his continued incarceration was warranted and legal.

Whether he’s guilty or not of the accused crimes is for a jury to decide – not you. And the fact that he was wrongly released means there is a possibility that someone else will become a victim if he has, in fact, committed a series of robberies.

You can demonize the NYPD and society in general all you want. And the more you do so – the more people will tune you out and ignore you even when you’re right. Hence, you are, and will likely always be ineffective in reality and left with little to do but rant on in this virtual world of the web.

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